Less than a year later, in 1935, Cora was baptized and received her first Holy Communion. Her husband and daughters did the same soon after.
The parish priest, Father Edward Vaughn, later wrote that Cora’s efforts inspired hundreds of Mormons to convert to the Catholic faith.
Still, in 1941, the family decided to move to California because her husband faced religious and cultural prejudices while trying to hold a job, the website reads. Five years later, in 1946, Cora said that Jesus asked her to promulgate the mystical humanity of Christ, or, as the website for her cause describes, “a way of prayer that encourages people to live with a heightened awareness of the indwelling presence of Jesus in their daily lives.”
In addition to her mystical experiences, Cora is considered to have had the ability to bilocate — to appear in two places at once — and to have suffered from the stigmata, Christ’s wounds on the cross present in her own flesh.
She died exactly 22 years after her baptism, on March 30, 1957, in Boulder Creek, California. Before her death, she hoped, as St. Thérèse of Lisieux did, to spend her life in heaven doing good on earth.
Michelle Duppong
Michelle Duppong dedicated her life to God, serving as a Catholic campus missionary for six years before becoming the director of adult faith formation for the Diocese of Bismarck, North Dakota.
During a surgery in 2014 intended to remove ovarian cysts, the surgeon discovered something else: stage 4 cancer.
“Upon hearing this, I knew that this was God’s will and that he would be with me in the midst of whatever would happen,” she wrote in one of her columns published by the Dakota Catholic Action newspaper. “God also allowed me to know that this cross was an invitation to me to help bring others closer in their relationship with him.”
She had two months to live, doctors said, but she lived another 12 — until Christmas Day in 2015. She was 31.
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Born in Colorado in 1984, Michelle was one of six kids and grew up on her family’s farm in Haymarsh, North Dakota. She went on to study horticulture at North Dakota State University in Fargo, where she graduated in 2006, before serving as a student missionary for FOCUS at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, South Dakota State University, the University of South Dakota, and the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota.
According to her obituary, she loved farm life, working in the gardens and vineyards, and taking part in campfire singalongs.
In another column, she addressed sainthood and “seeking holiness in the ordinary.”
“You were made to be a saint. Do you believe that? Do you think you can do it?” she wrote. “I want to remind you that there’s no doubt in God’s mind that you CAN do it!”
Before dying, Michelle consoled her Aunt Jean, who was dying of brain cancer, Michelle’s mother told the National Catholic Register.
“They cried and held each other,” Mary Ann remembered. “Jean told her that sometimes she didn’t feel Jesus with her. Michelle told her, ‘Sometimes, I don’t feel him either. Tell Jesus how you feel. He wants to know everything. Just turn to him.’”
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